My First Blog Post: March 8, 2012

Welcome to my nerdy blog, where I’ll cover topics such as Star Wars, crafts, and young adult fantasy literature. Mostly I’m just trying to get back into writing some. I have some books I’d like to write but feel really out of practice, so I’m hoping this blog will help me ease into it a little. Thanks for reading!

“Hello, world!” is the name of a type of program that beginning coders learn; it basically does nothing but print the words “Hello, world!” on the screen. So a lot of people title their first blog posts the same way, just a way of saying, Hi, I’m here. This is my start, figuring this out.

How has my blog changed since then?

Quite frankly, my blog is still exactly as described in my first post haha. I still talk about Star Wars, crafts, and young adult fantasy literature, among other things. I’ve been working on writing some of those books in my head (see excerpts, and my NaNoWriMo win), and having the blog has definitely helped, not just with practicing writing but also with finding a community of other writers to inspire and help me.

From the beginning, my blog has been a hodge-podge mix of nerdy topics. I know this has hampered my developing a super-strong following, because the kinds of people that like YA book reviews aren’t always the same people interested in video games, or biology, or K-pop, or scrapbooking. But keeping a variety of topics also lets me keep up a steady stream of posts that I feel passionate about writing, which keeps me from burning out. I think that’s how I’ve been able to keep my blog going to five years now.

It also helped me to develop some regular features on my blog, such as the Weekly Photo Challenge, Fanart Fridays, GeekyNerdy Book Club, etc. to give me fun, regular, easy-to-produce content. I know some other bloggers that do monthly reading wrap-ups, or weekly haikus. This kind of thing helps you get in a good rhythm with your blog.

Lastly, looking back on my very first posts, the biggest difference between then and now is presentation! My first posts are walls of text with not a lot of nice images or sections with headings; they just don’t look very professional or easy to read. Also the tone is too casual; I didn’t give background information on any of the books I was reviewing, or explain any of the acronyms I used. Most of these posts got exactly 0 views. Now I can understand why.